Month: August 2011

n my role as Section Editor for Career & Business at BlogHer I get to scour the internet looking for quality content to help you succeed. Career and business is central to many of our lives and yet it can sometimes feel hard to find voices that resonate with our heart, provide practical advice, and generally make us feel not so alone in our own journey. As a person who works with clients to discover and successfully create the work they are most meant to do in the world (and that goes far beyond just what job, field, or business you are in…) I know how important it is to have resources and support. It felt way too self-serving to include myself in my roundup of 25 women to read and yet I do want to invite you to check out my own blog (The Intuitive Intelligence™ blog) for some straight-shooting advice, interviews, and intuitive wisdom about careers and business.

Now, onto the roundup… here are 25 women with something valuable to say and worth your time (in no particular order).

Now What Coaching Blog: Laura Berman Fortgang and her community offers great advice on reinventing your career and finding meaning in what you do.

Passion for Business: Karyn Greenstreet is a veteran small business expert who offers solid advice on all things entrepreneurial. Funny, smart, and real-world advice.

Escape from Cubicle Nation: Pam Slim will help you break free of the cubicle and succeed as an entrepreneur. Best-selling author with honest, down-to-earth inspiration and advice.

Penelope Trunk: The Brazen Careerist often ruffles a lot of feathers. Whether you love her, hate her, or somewhere in between, you can expect thought-provoking content here.

The Time Finder: Who couldn’t use more time, right? Paula Eder is an expert at helping you invest your time in the right tasks and do them productively.

Steve Jobs resigned from Apple and the whole world (not to mention my Facebook page) was abuzz with the news. The highly intelligent and enigmatic man has taught us a lot, through his speeches and by example. A true leader in many respects, his talent with words has been one of his most admired traits. His speeches have the ability to move and inspire.

In a famous commencement speech Steve gave to Stanford in 2005, the Apple visionary advised students to never settle.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

. . . I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

Do you ever get tired of hearing the judges on American Idol say “keep it real” or “be yourself?” As annoying as it may be, it’s actually good advice in a lot of areas of life – including your job search.Many times, job seekers try to be something they’re not in order to tell the employer what they think they want to hear. But, that approach more often than not backfires because it comes across as fake and disinterested. The best thing you can do is to truly be yourself. Below are some tips to help you do that.

Know your strengths. This may go without saying, but a lot of people don’t do themselves justice. The more you know what your strengths are, the better you can communicate them to a potential employer.

Know how to sell yourself. Be sure you can clearly articulate what makes you the best candidate for the job using short, memorable phrases.

Practice. Look at yourself in a mirror to see how you come across in an interview or networking environment. Ask a friend to observe you and make suggestions.

“Can you take a look at my résumé and see what you think?” If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked this in the past year, I wouldn’t be rich, but I would have some extra dough.It’s true. Since I write about jobs and careers, it’s not surprising that I’ve been fielding calls from friends and colleagues, who want me to take a look at their résumé to see what’s missing, give some pointers.I try to help. They agonize over the details. They’re frustrated beyond belief. They shoot their résumés off in a flick of a button when they hear about a job opening, and then silence-no response.Sound familiar?

I offer my two cents. (For more strategies to land a job when you’re over 55, read my post here.) But to get some deeper insight, I asked Tony Beshara, author of Unbeatable Résumés(Amacom, 2011), a Dallas-based recruiting and job placement powerhouse and president of Babich & Associates to share his secrets.

KH: Why are people so obsessed with their résumé? TB: The primary reason people spend so much time, money, and effort in writing a résumé is that this is the one activity within the job search that they can control. Instead of picking up the phone and calling a prospective employer to ask for a face-to-face interview-risking potential rejection-people agonize over their résumés.Here’s the truth–it is rare to get hired by simply submitting a résumé –the purpose of the résumé is to help get you an interview. And at the interview, remember that 40 percent of a hiring decision is based on personality. You’ve got to get the interview and sell your pitutee off.

KH: What makes an unbeatable résumé?TB: It has to be simple. No more than two pages. The average résumé gets read in 10 seconds. Be sure the content is on a level any high school senior could understand. In other words, the person looking at your résumé should be able to easily understand exactly who you have worked for and what that company does. Just because you know the company or it’s a big name like IBM, Boeing Corp, or Ford Motor Co, doesn’t mean everyone is familiar with what your specific division does.

Avoid the fancy-schmancy layout, font, and other special effects. Stick to traditional font of Times New Roman, 9 to 12 point size, and black type against a white paper. You might try a different type size for your name and the companies you have worked for, perhaps your title. But try to be consistent. Go easy on boldface type, italics, and underlining.

Prepare it in a simple Word format that can easily be viewed on most computers. Not a table format or template.

Use a reverse chronological order. List your present, or most recent job, first, and then work backwards. You state the complete name of the company you work for, or have worked for, and what they do, how long you were there–month and year. Then list the position you held and your accomplishments. You don’t have to use full sentences. Begin with verbs. “Managed company tax reporting, finance, invoicing, purchasing,” for example.

Get rid of objectives and summary and all that silly stuff. It’s all fluff. An employer doesn’t care about your objective. He cares about his.

Skip personal information such as married with three kids. Sounds stable to you. But to a hiring authority looking for someone to travel, it may keep you from being interviewed.

Stories sell. Numbers, statistics, percentages get attention if you put in bold type. Increased profit by this 28%. Came under budget by 30%. If you were born and raised on chicken farm, note it on your résumé.

Fuzzy key words and phrases should be avoided. These include customer-oriented, excellent communications skills, and creative. These words lack meaning and do absolutely nothing to help you get an interview.

There’s no question that the Internet has changed the way we search for jobs. Email, social media, job boards – a world of career opportunities are literally just a click away. But all this easy job seeking comes at a cost – whether you’re sending a email, letter of inquiry, or a submitting a resume – you’re just another faceless applicant among millions of job seekers.

When we apply to jobs online, we lose a good portion of our personal marketing message. There’s only so much a great LinkedIn profile or Facebook page communicates about who we really are as a person. It’s not the same as actually talking to someone real-time. On the Internet, great applicants get overlooked and great talent gets lost in translation.

So how do we stand out in such an impersonal system? This article advocates using an old piece of technology to get you in front of a human being – the tried and true telephone.After you’ve applied to some jobs online, it’s time to call some companies and hiring managers. You’ll be seen as more driven and proactive just by making the effort. However, picking up the phone and calling a stranger can be the hardest thing in the world. Compared to non-confrontational emails, social media messages, etc., selling yourself on the phone is a whole different ballgame. But those who make the extra effort reap the rewards. So how do you actually make the call? Read below for some tips:

Research who to call: This is where your network and the Internet comes in handy. It wouldn’t make much sense to open up the phone book and blindly call the receptionist at all companies you’re looking at. You need the names of hiring managers and decision makers – and your network can help. You can do your detective work on a company’s website or any of the social media networks. Ask for referrals and probe around your industry for opportunities.

Make a script: If you don’t feel comfortable with off-the-cuff conversation, make a cold call script just like salespeople do. This can range from a few scribbled talking points to a full on elevator pitch. If you can’t get through to anyone, leave a short voice-mail and move on. You never know who might call you back.

1. Twitter is free; and with the cost of business sometimes being a hefty burden, even recruitment firms can’t resist the charms of a no-cost, useful online tool. For recruiters seeing a decline in assignments, free services such as Twitter can offer needed relief to a weighed-down operating budget.For job seekers: Twitter is free, even to Jane and Joe Job Seeker. If recruiters are using Twitter to attract ideal job candidates, it seems only fitting job seekers should put themselves in the position to be attracted.

2. Twitter provides a substantial reach for recruiters, putting them in touch with prime job candidates that few other online services provide. Building hundreds of followers within a few short weeks is very doable, so Twitter can certainly put recruiters in touch with followers (job seekers) quickly as well.For job seekers: Twitter puts you within “tweet reach” of recruiters.

3. Twitter offers a formal and informal platform for recruiters to open conversations. Recruiters strive for the best job candidates, which usually means “cherry picking” prime candidates away from competitors. Twitter certainly offers one more method of contact to pick.For job seekers: Make yourself accessible to recruiters by learning about their current and continued recruitment needs. Take an active interest in keeping up on recruiter posts, recommending colleagues or associates when the need arises [keep in mind not each job posted will be perfect for you, but might be perfect for someone in your network — don’t forget to feed your network!].